Round one of the Truist Championship might not have seen the biggest names rise to the top of the leaderboard, but it definitely had its fair share of oddities.
Rory McIlroy almost had a scorecard filled only with pars for the first time in his career, but made a putt for birdie on the 18th hole to move to one-under par.
The Northern Irishman is now seven strokes behind Matt McCarty, who shot an opening round 63 to storm into the lead. And he did something during Thursday’s play that hasn’t been done on the PGA Tour in seven years.
Matt McCarty’s does something the PGA Tour hasn’t seen in seven years with putting performance
McCarty’s putter was on fire during his opening round at the Truist, so much so he did something the PGA Tour hasn’t seen since 2019.
McCarty made 220 feet of putts on Thursday at Quail Hollow, which was the most feet of putts in a PGA Tour round since Daniel Berger at the 2019 3M Open. Berger had 223 feet and six inches worth of putts that day, beating McCarty by just over three feet.
Unsurprisingly, McCarty leads the event in Strokes Gained: Putting through round one, having gained 4.18 strokes to the field. That’s nearly half a stroke more than Sungjae Im, who is second in the tournament and second in the putting stats.
You’d imagine McCarty’s putter must cool down over the final three days, but it’s given him a solid foundation to go and challenge for the win.
Matt McCarty reacts to putting performance after the opening round at the Truist
After his opening round which gave him the 18-hole lead at the Truist, McCarty said that it’s no surprise that putting was the best part of his game. He said he’s been good on the greens for a while now, and everything just came together at Quail Hollow.
He said, “I’ve been putting pretty good for the last couple years. Feel like it’s normally a strength of my game, and honestly, this year I feel like I haven’t been able to pop the top off it any round so far.
“I don’t know if I was more expecting to putt well and make a bunch of 12-, 15-, 20-footers maybe, not exactly that, but, yeah, no, it was a good day and felt good out there and it was nice to kind of put it all together and on the greens especially.”
According to McCarty, this performance has been coming for a long time, so maybe we can expect more of the same moving forward!
